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Childhood fears

Didn't like the Jaws theme when I was a kid. My brother would chase me around in the water singing it - freak me out.

Augustus Gloop getting sucked up the chocolate river tube in Willy Wonka. Actually, that scene still gives me the creeps.

Thunderstorms, yes. Rollercoaters too. For sure thought the cars were going to fly off the tracks. I think that fear comes from a movie too.

Thanks a lot, Hollywood!
 
The boogieman that lived in the closet. A being of such malevolent evil that the only way of foiling him was by hiding under the blankets of my bed.
 
Insects. They jump around and hop on you and there's nothing you can do about it cuz they're so darn fast. I was especially afraid that one would fly into my mouth.
 
A babysitter, tired of having to chase me back into bed several times an evening, told me there were giant mutant spiders under my bed that would digest me whole if I got out of bed again.

Coupled that with a viewing of Arachnophobia when I was way too young to understand the concept of 'horror comedy' and you have a kid who was terrified of killer spiders for years.

Later, another babysitter told us that if we touched the hot water tank, it would explode and kill everyone in the neighborhood. I was so afraid of the hot water tank after that, I couldn't look at it and would hold my breath and run past it as fast as I could. Whenever my parents opened the cabinet where the tank was, I'd start screaming and panicking.

Yes, I had some asshole babysitters.
 
My bed was my safety zone at night. So when I slept, I would never let my feet go anywhere outside of the bed or else something would get me.
 
I was introduced to TORNADOES by my first viewing of "The Wizard of OZ". I remember, as a wee five year old, commenting to my mother that "...it sure is a good thing that there aren't any tornadoes for real!" To which she replied " Well of course they are!". I almost filled my pants right then and there. For years afterward whenever it thundered I shivered in fright and couldn't sleep! If the wind got up with thunder and rain, I almost shat my innards out! Oh yeah and there were the evil POLICEMEN who were going to "take me away" if I didn't behave! I can't imagine what would've happened had a policeman dropped by my house during a thunderstorm....
 
As much as I enjoyed Godzilla movies during the day, at night I was completely convinced he and his merry band of monsters would stomp their way through the streets of New York directly to my house. It didn't help matters any that we lived within spitting distance of a Long Island Railroad trestle. Let one train rumble by as I was nodding off and I knew he was right in our driveway!
 
When my sister and I were young we read some Stranger than Fiction style book full of purportedly true tales. One of them was about these invisible orange spirit type things (not sure how they managed to be both invisible AND orange..) that increasing numbers of people reported being bitten by, sometimes to the point of death. It was all very Twilight Zone with this veneer of hidden truth, like the Big Foot was at the time or the Jersey Devil. We were both TERRIFIED of these things and would lie awake at night absolutely petrified about them. It must have been a very compelling story as our fears lasted for several years.
 
It seems a lot of kids have fears related to toilets and plumbing. When I was little, I was afraid to get close to or walk under any large pipe. I figured it must be a sewer or drain pipe and there was a chance it might suddenly burst and dump shit all over me.

Even when I got a bit older, I still had a fear of falling into a sewage pit or septic tank — probably instilled by the scenes of pilots crashing their airplanes into the sewage farm in Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines.
 
I had (still have, just found all my GB toys and G-1 transformers that I stored away back in '99)this fucked up ghostbusters toy that was a toilet monster thingy had me leery of toilets for a while
 
I also went through a phase when I was 4 or 5 when I was afraid to flush the toilet. I still flushed every time, but would run out of the bathroom as fast as I possibly could as soon as I pulled the handle!

I had this fear of any type of plumbing as well. In fact, I hated using the toilet anywhere except for at home, so my mom always had to accompany me to any toilet outside the home and hold me in place while I screamed. I'm assuming it's related to my fear of bathtub drains.

For the record, my brothers weren't always cruel. They are 4, 8 and 9 years older than me, so they were babysitters more than playmates. My middle brother, the one who told me about the bathtub drain, didn't like me much when I was very young but once I was 9 or 10 we became closer. He's the only brother with whom I now have regular contact.
 
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